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Nov 6, 2015

VOX Tips & Tricks: Basic Settings Part 1

The VOX app was designed to be a simple, intuitive and versatile music player for Mac users. While the default settings make it extremely easy to use with minimal experience and guidance, we’d like to provide you with tips on how to customize VOX to fit your personal listening taste and tech setup. In these first two editions of VOX Tips & Tricks, we’ll cover the basics.

Before we get into VOX’s preferences, you have to check your Mac’s system settings.

The Device Choice drop-down menu in your Mac’s System Preferences allows users to select the output audio device (audio card, headphones or AirPlay destination) to play sound on your Mac.

“System Default” is the device chosen in OS X Preferences->Sound->Output. When “System Default” device is selected in VOX, the app will always play your Mac’s system sound preference setting. However, VOX also allows you to select any other output device accessible through your system. When the device is changed, VOX will automatically switch audio to that new destination.

VOX Preferences

Synchronize Sample RateSampling Rate (SR) is one of the basic parameters in digital audio. It’s attributed to sound cards and audio files in particular. It defines how often (how many times per second) the audio signal is digitized. This feature tries to set the output device SR to the corresponding SR of the file playing. If the output device does not support the SR the track has, VOX will try to select the best possible for each file.

When disabled, VOX uses the default device’s SR setting, regardless of the actual track SR, and high-quality resampling is applied. The advantage of Synchronizing Sample Rate is that there is no need to re-sample audio during playback. This results in:

1. better sound quality due to lack of re-computation otherwise needed. No anti-aliasing takes place, so the audio sounds as much similar to the original as possible.2. less CPU time consumption, as the result of avoiding re-sampling. This is especially noticeable in Hi-Res audio files with SRs of 96kHz and better. It also produces less battery drain.

The disadvantage of this feature is the interruption that takes place during the track changes, when the sound device is switched to another Sampling Rate.

With Synchronize Sample Rate enabled, if you have two tracks that play consecutively with different SRs, there will be a notable gap between songs. It also disables track overlap and gapless playback in some situations (this will be described in more detail in the next Advanced Tips blog).

Obtain Exclusive Access (Hog Mode)Hog Mode allows VOX to use selected output as its sole audio device. No other application will be able to play on this device. For this reason “System Default” device cannot be “Hogged” — it is used by all apps and system. Hog mode avoids the need to mix audio from different apps in the device, and, therefore, uses less computation.

In Part 2, we will tackle the rest of the basic features and then move on to more advanced features for expert users. If there are any features you’d like to see added, or explained in a future Tips & Tricks, please leave a comment below and we’ll try to address all of them.

If you had trouble with the link to download the Smart Controls Add-on, or want more information, copy and paste this link in your browser: http://coppertino.com/addon/